


the rain keeps falling

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Don't Touch Lola (Agents of SHIELD), F/M, First Kiss, First Time, Friends to Lovers, Future Fic, Love Confessions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-06
Updated: 2018-01-06
Packaged: 2019-02-28 22:23:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13281078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: Written for #CousyWinter at johnsonandcoulson.comPrompt: "Back on earth Daisy and Coulson go on a quest to get back Lola"





	the rain keeps falling

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hamsterfactor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hamsterfactor/gifts).



The day seems to start clear enough - Daisy has been waiting for a good weather forecast to do this. She’s had to put it off a couple of times ever since she got the idea for this.

The junior agent drops them in a warehouse-lined street about an hour and a half outside the base.

“We’ll take it from here,” Daisy tells him. Sometimes she’s a bit embarrassed at how naturally giving orders comes to her. It’s not even a few weeks since they’ve come back -to Earth, to their present time, the most dramatic definition of “coming back” she can think of- and Daisy is not sure she -or anyone- has an official position in SHIELD anymore, but she does know she’s giving a lot of orders lately.

“Are you going to tell me what we’re doing here?” Coulson asks.

“In a moment.”

He’s humored her so far. And Daisy knows it’s been a rough couple of weeks for him. Hence today.

They step into the semi-darkness of one of the warehouses (Daisy had the key) and it takes a moment for her to adjust her eyes to it. The place is full of vehicles of different sizes, all under some cloth or tarpaulin cover or other. She takes out her phone and follows the instructions, with Coulson obediently and silently walking behind her.

Finally they come to the spot.

“I think it’s this one?”

She pulls the canvas from one of the edges, revealing part of the hood of the car, her unmistakable red.

“Lola,” Daisy hears him breathe behind her.

She smiles and keeps removing the cover. (He should have known.)

“As soon as we got back I asked Agent Piper to find out her whereabouts,” she explains. “I imagined you had other stuff in your mind.”

“I didn’t even think…” he trails off.

It’s okay, she thinks. That’s why she wanted to do it like this, so it’d be a nice surprise. She knew he wasn’t thinking about it. His expression turns from annoyed at having forgotten to longing - she can’t describe it any other way, then again Coulson’s feelings for this car have never been exactly platonic. His eyes linger over the curve of her hood.

“What’s her state?” he asks.

“Technically it should be in the shop,” she replies. “But it can still drive? From the last time Mack fixed the basics. Shall we risk it?”

“If you drive,” he tells her (he has the feeling that was the idea, after all.)

“That’s the idea,” Daisy says, and finishes uncovering Lola.

It’s weird, and in a way she guesses it will never not be weird, watching Coulson take the passenger’s seat, while Daisy herself sits behind the wheel.

(It’s funny how natural it looks from where he stands, Daisy driving him, as if she had never done anything else in her life, Coulson thinks)

They drive through gray, uninspired landscapes at first. Daisy wonders if Coulson minds. She spent years of her life driving alone through such views, and she came to appreciate their ugly mundane charm.

Coulson seems distracted, looking away. Daisy doesn’t take it as a bad sign - in fact she takes it as kind of a good sign, that he’s relaxed enough with her to not try so hard, at least not all the time, let go a bit. Loosen up, that would be her choice of words. Even if that means being melancholy and not very chatty. But he’s been pretending things are fine since they came back, even though she knows he wasn’t satisfied with how they left things at the human colony in the Kree station. They did what they could but that wasn’t enough for Coulson.

“I thought we could do lunch first,” she says.

It’s sounds so silly, now that she puts it in practice. And so patronizing.

Coulson catches the absurdity of it all. “I don’t think it’s my birthday yet.”

“I thought about doing this for your birthday, but I guess you’d appreciate knowing Lola was okay earlier.”

He nods. Still humoring her. Daisy doesn’t say she thought he needed the cheering up _now_ , because who is she ti assume he needs it, or to assume she of all people can cheer him up. But then she remembers the small and big ways in which Coulson had always tried to make her feel better when things didn’t go her way. Sometimes the smallness of the gesture made it all more poignant. She remembers red vines against the fact of her murderous father forcing her to become an earthquake monster. It would seem absurd. That hadn’t stopped Coulson. She remembers waking up in the Framework and looking for him, because no matter how small the measure of comfort he’ll always give her something, even if it’s just her name, remembered against all odds and logic.

So maybe this won’t be enough to cheer him up, but maybe it means something that she tries (it does).

Daisy brings him to a little roadside place, off the main road, a hidden gem she found through foodie blogs. They make great eggs and that seems to put Coulson in a more communicative mood.

After lunch the views seem to improve too. And there’s a nice cool breeze that wasn’t there before.

“This is nice,” Coulson says.

It starts smelling of trees and grass.

Daisy decides to put on some music but soon - song after song - she realizes it’s the wrong mood. Daisy laughs. It startles Coulson a bit until he catches up. The ridiculousness of the lyrics, especially in context. 

“Sorry, they’re all romantic,” she says, contrite.

“Yes.”

“Well, next time you can do this with a date,” Daisy tells him. “Right now being with a friend is good company, right?”

“A friend is good company,” he says. “You’re great company.”

Daisy beams at the distinction, but she doesn’t comment on it. Unusual as the day is turning - though that was the idea, ultimately - Coulson talking to her like that is the first time that’s felt really normal since they came back. They’re all just drifting, scared of being zapped back to that horrible place at any moment, or waking up to the discover they are still there.

Coulson seems to have loosened up as much as one can expect under the circumstances, and Daisy is relatively happy. She keeps smiling. She catches Coulson smiling back. Lola drives like a dream. They don’t talk now but it’s not bad or awkward. It’s really nice, this silence. They can hear the crackling of electricity in the clouds above them.

Then the first handful of raindrops fall.

“Oh, no,” Daisy shrieks. Looking helplessly at the car’s controls. Her knowledge of Lola doesn’t extent that far. “How do you make the thingy go up?”

“Here,” Coulson says, reaching out himself, his arm brushing Daisy’s leg as dots of rain start drawing dark circles on her jeans.

Coulson pushes a button under the wheel.

Nothing happens.

He keeps pushing the button.

“Shit,” Daisy says. “It must be one of the things Mack hasn’t fixed yet. It wasn’t supposed to rain today, I’m sorry.”

“Come on, we can do it manually.”

They get out of the car and as they work the cover up the rain starts getting heavier and heavier. In the few steps it takes them to get behind the car Daisy feels her whole attire get soaked. As they wrestle with the foldable roof she can feel the rain getting in her underwear, her socks. Her mouth and eyes. She follows Coulson’s instructions blindly. All in all she’s sure they manage the maneuver pretty quickly and Lola is soon covered - but damn, all that water on the seats - but by them all their clothes are a mess.

When they go back inside, water pouring from their hair onto their shoulders and laps, Coulson has a distressed expression and Daisy panics.

“It’s okay Coulson, it’s okay,” she says, turning her body towards him. “It will take more than a little rain to take Lola out of commission.”

“Rain…”

“What?”

“All those people in the station. In the future… they never knew what it felt like. Real rain.”

“Coulson…”

His face frozen in a grimace, Daisy has the terrible impression that he is about to cry. Which is absurd, it’s Coulson and so she’s not sure she could bear it to see him cry.

So, not-thinking quickly Daisy grabs him by the shoulders - his drenched clothes giving way under her fingertips in a way that reminds her of falling, or drowning - and presses her mouth (cold-hot, and wet) to his. It’s too short to be anything but shocking for either of them. But shock is better than the sad face he was making a moment ago.

“You tried to help everybody back there,” she tells him, as if kissing him were just a logical part of this conversation and the point was this one. “And you did help. They’re better off for having known you.” She smiles. “You have that effect.”

“I’m glad to have that in common with you,” Coulson replies, not missing a beat.

Daisy blinks, and a big fat drop of rain falls from her eyelashes.

“That’s the nicest thing anyone has said to me. And I think… Yeah, in fact I’m pretty sure I’m going to kiss you again, Coulson.” She shrugs. “Unless you tell me no.”

He makes a noise - between a snort and something emotional being choked into silence.

(of course _she_ would think that’s a possibility)

“Daisy…” God her name in his mouth has taken on a whole new meaning. She feels her cheeks heat up under the cold film of rain. “I’m not going to say no.”

Once she’s made sure that’s his final say Daisy flings her body across the seats and starts attacking Coulson’s mouth again. She’s always been an impulsive kisser but this is a whole new level - attacking _Coulson_ , the idea makes her giggle a bit, giggles swallowed by Coulson’s increasingly enthusiastic mouth and the giggling noise drowned by rain against the roof, each drop loud as a heartbeat, and the thunder over them. Daisy closes her eyes and still she sees brief flashes under her eyelids, the storm approaching across the open field. They should probably get back already, for safety, but to hell with that, her mouth seems to say, too busy exploring and sucking and biting a bit (he likes it when Daisy catches his bottom lip between her teeth, he likes it when it slips from that grip and they are left with rain in their mouths).

Coulson’s hand moves to her hair and grabs a wet handful, pulls her away from him to catch his breath it seems. Daisy groans moans and whimpers a bit when the only hot thing on her skin - Coulson’s lips - abandons her. She opens her eyes reluctantly.

They look at each other, drenched from the rain, cheeks red from the physical effort, chests heaving, breathing fast.

“I love you,” Daisy says. It spills out of her mouth really, and it’s a stupid thing to say right now (in her experience a total mood-killer), so she presses her mouth against Coulson’s again, because that’s slightly less stupid.

Once more he kisses back, with enough enthusiasm that Daisy relaxes a bit, she can feel her whole body uncurling and spreading on the car’s seat.

Coulson doesn’t look sad anymore, which is good. 

She touches his face with her hand, it’s cold and soft and she bites the inside of her cheek, feeling her self-control slip further and further.

“I can’t stop kissing you,” Daisy says.

She sounds drunk. (He feels drunk.)

“Good,” Coulson tells her. “Don’t stop.”

“This will sound like a line but I’ve never felt about anyone the way I feel about you.”

She winces. It does sound like a trite line. She never knew such clichés could feel so entirely true and still sound like loser’s talk.

But Coulson is smiling so maybe he doesn’t mind.

“I never imagined I _could_ feel the way I feel about you.”

That’s a very Coulson way of putting it. Guarded, ambiguous, and still the best compliment Daisy has ever received.

She kisses him again (he can’t stop kissing her). 

Her hands go everywhere and she feels like a woman possessed - okay, so she’s never actually seen a Ryan Gosling movie but she’s sure this is the kind of stuff that goes on in them, all mouths and touching, and _touching_ , she’s pretty sure she’s touching Coulson (Coulson!) and she doesn’t recognize herself and she loves it.

(He feels Daisy’s hand, almost painfully warm between damp clothes and cold skin.)

But the wet clothes, all sticky and impossible to draw apart and the small seats and the space between the seats and the annoyingly big wheel. The contrast between the icy clothes and the warmth spreading between her legs is uncomfortable. She can feel herself getting frustrated with something more than arousal. She tries to get closer somehow, and she can’t, the friction not enough for her.

“As much as I’m sure Lola would love it if we got it on right here I’m afraid I’m getting old for that stuff,” she says.

“Do you want to finish this at the base?”

“Would you be very disappointed with my lack of adventurous spirit if I said yes?”

He shakes his head, brushing his mouth over hers. Slowly. They didn’t have much time to taste each other’s kisses with all the rush. 

“I love you too,” he tells her, words very close to her mouth.

She looks caught, an animal in the headlights. (Like maybe she really didn’t expect him to say it back. It makes Coulson’s heart break a bit. It makes him realize how true those words he carelessly just said are.)

A big drop of rain falls from his hair, across his forehead and down his nose. Daisy catches it with her thumb, caressing his face lovingly. She laughs.

“If that’s true then we’d better get going or…” she leans into the passenger’s side again, pressing her mouth against him. “Or I’m going to crash this car.”

Coulson blushes, (feeling something new). 

Daisy’s eyes go back to the road, and she starts the car, drives fast, of course, and Coulson slips his hand over her knee, keeps it there all the way to the base.

 

+

 

The rain hasn’t let up and from her new room on the first floor - like all the orders she’s been giving, Daisy is not sure how the change came about - they can hear the water against the walls of the building.

It’s still raining when they start undressing, peeling his clothes off with some difficulty, in front of the other. Daisy shivers, but it’s not just the cold cloth sticking to her skin.

“I’m nervous. Is that okay?”

All fidgety and awkward and - oh god, she sounds like her father.

Coulson nods and gives her a short and sweet smile. He struggles with his jeans (his hands feel numb) but he has enough patience. Or maybe he’s having second thoughts? No. Daisy doesn’t allow herself to think like that. He said he loved her. And he wouldn’t lie.

It’s still raining and the sound is almost hypnotic as they stand in the middle of the room, naked, looking a bit ridiculous but overall sexy, Daisy thinks. Not daring to break the spell and be the first to touch the over. They had been so movie-passionate back in Lola, and now they are shy and careful and Daisy thinks she likes this version better.

( _Please touch me again._ )

Daisy makes the first move - it’s only fair, since this whole day was her idea.

“You hands are cold,” Coulson says, as her fingers draw circles over his heart. His chest hair is damp, stuck to his skin.

“Sorry.”

He shakes his head.

“Come here,” he says, grabbing her elbow with such gentleness Daisy has a hard time believing this is the same guy who went at it on her mouth so savagely half an hour ago. He puts his arms around her, running his hands up and down her back, like he’s trying to warm Daisy up, even though he’s just as naked and cold.

But it feels good, cold skin against cold skin, her breasts pressed against his chest as he hugs her, their hips touching, his cock soft and a bit warmer than the rest, comfortably settled against Daisy’s thigh.

It’s still raining when they finally move to her bed, and they are a little less cold by now, but it will still get some time to dry. The damp print of Coulson’s head on her pillow. Drops from Daisy’s hair falling onto his collarbone as she bends over, rain-soaked pubic hair as she lowers herself onto him, the palms of his hands still freezing as he threads his fingers with hers, as he holds her when she’s moving above him, slowly, so slowly. (He likes slow, he’s always liked slow, and with Daisy he feels he likes it even more, because there’s so much more to take in).

It’s still raining when they are finished and lying side by side on Daisy’s bed, with Coulson’s arm over Daisy’s arm and Daisy’s hand moving up and down the length of his arm, from the soft skin of his shoulder to the also-soft but in a different way skin of his prosthetic to his fingers.

“Are you still thinking about them?”

“Who?”

“The people who never got to see the rain.”

Coulson nods - she feels his nose move against the back of her head.

“Yeah.”

Daisy settles closer to him, so that his arms hold her tighter.

“You wouldn’t be you if you didn’t.”

“Mmm,” he mutters against her hair. She likes this. The closeness. With other people she was with it could get a bit overcrowded - though, needy as she is she usually swallowed that discomfort - but Coulson is kind of… a light presence, leaving enough room even when every inch of his body seems to be pressed to every inch of Daisy’s body. She likes that she can feels his words as well as hear them. “I didn’t use to be like that.”

( _But I died._

_And then I met you._ )

“Well, I never met that Coulson, and I find it hard to believe he ever existed but…” she hesitates. “Was he happier that way? Things not bothering him?”

She feels him shake his head before-

“No, he wasn’t,” he tells her. He grabs her shoulder and turns her towards him, so that his mouth can touch the edge of hers. “He’s happier now.”

Ah well.

That was the plan.


End file.
